


A Midsummer Night's Passion

by ophelia_interrupted



Series: One New Orleans Summer [2]
Category: Benjamin January Mysteries - Barbara Hambly
Genre: Aftercare, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Oral Sex, Polyamory, Porn with Feelings, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 12:13:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7267687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ophelia_interrupted/pseuds/ophelia_interrupted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose and Ben comfort Hannibal after his caning.  With lots of sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Midsummer Night's Passion

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks once again to the wonderful Brigidh, for betaing.

            When Hannibal awoke it was full dark; the moon shining through the window cast blue highlights and velvety black shadows over everything.  He was still lying in Rose and Ben’s arms.  He shifted, holding Ben tighter.  He felt much better than he had—cocooned between the Januarys he felt loved, forgiven, safe.  It was a wonderful feeling that he relaxed into like a warm bath.  True, his eyes were still sore from crying and his behind ached, but physical discomfort was nothing next to knowing that Rose and Ben would not allow him to kill himself with alcohol. 

            Wanting to share his happiness, he lifted Rose’s arm from where it lay across him and kissed her hand.  Then he turned and kissed Ben’s back, several soft kisses in a line over his shoulder blade.  The other man stirred.  “What time is it?” Ben asked, stretching.  On the other side of Hannibal, Rose stirred as well, making a sleepy noise.

            “Still before midnight, I think,” Hannibal said, between kisses. 

            Ben rolled over to face him.  “How are you feeling?”

            “So in love.”  Hannibal held Rose’s hand up and kissed the palm. 

            “Who are you in love with this time?” Ben teased.

            “ _With silver bells and cockle shells, and pretty maids all in a row_.”  Hannibal fell to kissing the underside of Rose’s wrist, the smooth-skinned inside of her forearm.

            “You sound drunk,” Ben said, with mock sourness.

            Hannibal stopped and looked at him, spooked by the thought that Ben really was accusing him of running afoul of their agreement again so soon.  Then when the moonlight showed that Ben’s face was not serious, Hannibal said, “Oh, no.  Definitely not.  It’s not worth it, you see.”

            “Good,” Ben said, and kissed him full on the lips.  Hannibal was very much in the mood to be kissed, and he made a quiet, disappointed sound when Ben pulled back and sat up.  The fiddler watched as he lit a spill from the night light and then touched it to the bedside lamp.  Golden light spilled over them.  Ben patted Hannibal’s shoulder and said, “Turn over.  I want a look at your backside.”

            “You say that to all the men, don’t you?” Hannibal asked in feigned despair.  Ben bopped him with a pillow.  Then he got up, and Hannibal obligingly rolled over onto his stomach.  Ben lifted the covers off of him, then raised the back of his shirt. 

            Rose sat up and folded her legs under her as Ben examined him, and gave a sympathetic “Ohh,” when she saw Hannibal’s bottom.  “I think you overdid it, Ben.”

            “He didn’t,” Hannibal said, resting his chin in his hands.  “I got exactly what I’ve needed for ages, and aside from wondering how I’m going to manage to sit for the next few days, I am thrilled.”

            “Thrilled?” Ben echoed.  “That’s . . . not what I expected you to say.”

            “Why?  What did you expect me to say?”

            “To be honest, I was worried you’d hate me.  For hurting you.”

            “Remember when you had to set my broken leg, and it hurt so much I almost threw up?” Hannibal asked.

            “Yes,” Ben said a little grudgingly, as if he didn’t want to concede the connection.

            “Did I hate you?”

            “No.”

            “Then why should I hate you for discouraging my most self-destructive tendencies?  I _love_ you for this.” 

            “I suspect you’re crazy,” Ben said judiciously, “but I love you too.” 

            “ _Da mi basia mille, deinde centum, dein mille altera, dein secunda centum . . ._ ” Hannibal recited.  Then Rose picked up the quotation and said it with him: “ _deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum . . ._ ”

            With his fingertips Ben gently brushed a particularly tender spot on Hannibal’s behind.  “Ideally we’d get some ice on those welts.”

            Hannibal broke off quoting Catullus and said, “In that case, I shall immediately repair to the grandest party on the lakeside, and ask the lady of the house for a cup of shaved ice to put upon my sore tail.  _Poiché: è Dando, che si riceve._ ”

            “I’d whack you again if I thought it would do any good,” Ben said, and covered him up.

            “ _Nec vitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus,_ ” Hannibal said with a sigh.  “Are you coming back to bed?” he asked, looking back at Ben hopefully.

            “Actually, I thought I’d go sit alone in the other room for the rest of the night.  In the dark.”

            Hannibal made a show of rolling over and turning his back to Ben.  “Very well.  All the more kisses for Rose and me.”  Ben dropped a pillow on his head, and then got back into bed.  He wrapped his arm around Hannibal’s chest and began kissing the back of his neck.

            “Ah,” Hannibal said quietly, “that feels nice.”

            Rose sat beside them, taking her long, copper-brown hair out of the ruin of her chignon.  “You don’t know how happy it makes me,” she said, “watching my beautiful boys love each other.”

            “Lie down, Rose,” Ben urged, patting the bed on the other side of Hannibal.

            “In a moment.  I have to get out of this dress . . . I’m positively stifling.”

            “Let me help you,” Ben said, his voice husky with desire.  He got up and began undoing the buttons at the front of her dress.  Once Rose was standing in her naked glory, she began to help Ben out of his clothes.  Hannibal watched them a bit dreamily, smiling as he lay with his chin resting in his hand, feeling himself harden against the mattress but unwilling to disturb them. 

            They kissed deeply, hungrily, until Rose broke away and raised the covers for Ben to climb back into bed.  As he did so, she looked at Hannibal and smiled.  “What are you still doing in that shirt?” she asked.

            “Oh, you mean this old thing?” Hannibal asked, as if he were a plaçée faking modesty at a Blue Ribbon Ball. 

            “He was just taking it off,” Ben said, tugging at the fabric.

            Hannibal sat up--which while not terribly comfortable, was at least bearable--and allowed Ben to pull his shirt up over his head and toss it over the footboard.  Once he was naked, Hannibal put his arms around the other man, and they held each other, warm skin against warm skin.  Softly, almost chastely at first, they began exploring one another’s mouths with their lips.  Ben tasted subtly of salt and the lemonade he and Rose had drunk at dinner.  It fueled Hannibal’s desire for more, to go deeper, and the hunger of his kisses grew.  Ben responded by cupping his hand behind the fiddler’s head, twining strands of his long hair between his fingers.  Hannibal felt a spark ignite in his loins, and then suddenly Ben had taken him by the shoulders and put him firmly on his back in the bed. 

            Delighted by Ben’s intensity, Hannibal looked up at Rose and confided, “This is my favorite part.” 

            She laughed. 

            Ben proceeded to kiss him along the line of his jaw, the pit of his throat, in the so-sensitive spot just beneath his ear.  As he did so, Hannibal began to sing breathily to the tune of a popular song: “ _I know a bank where the wild thyme blows/ Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows . . ._ ”

            Ben broke the kiss to answer teasingly, “ _And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes/ And make her full of hateful fantasies?_  It’s not really very romantic, is it?”

            “I don’t know . . . I’d say it depends on the fantasies.  Don’t you agree, my Athène?” he looked up at Rose.

            “Entirely,” she said, arching an eyebrow at him. 

            Hannibal reached out and took her hand, brought it to his lips.  “ _Doubt thou the stars are fire/ Doubt the sun doth move/ Doubt truth to be a liar/ But never doubt I love,_ ” he recited. 

            “Thank you, Hamlet,” she said fondly, “but I think I’d rather not be the fair Ophelia.  _Too much of water hast_ she.”

            “Who would you rather be, then?” Hannibal asked. 

            “Rosalind,” said Rose.  “She outwits everyone, and she survives the play.”

            “I always wanted to be Romeo, but everybody knows I’m Falstaff,” Hannibal said, feigning heartbreak.

            “Feste, surely,” said Rose.

            “Definitely Feste,” agreed Ben. 

            “Who would you like to be, _amicus meus_?” Hannibal asked.

            Ben thought for a moment, and then said, “Theseus, I think.  He’s wise and clever, and he’s a good leader to his people.”

            “He’s also barely in the play,” Hannibal pointed out.

            “Hush,” Ben said, and firmly kissed him.  Hannibal made soft, contented noises as Ben gently sucked and nibbled at his lips.  When he was finally let up for air, Hannibal stretched languidly and said, “ _Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry / Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie._ ” 

            “I see,” said Ben, and lightly kissed the pit of his throat.  “Like that?” His lips were so close that the fiddler could feel them brush his skin when he spoke. 

            “You could go a little lower.”

            Ben kissed him over his sternum.  “Like that?” he asked.

            “Not quite.”

            Next Ben kissed him just beneath the base of his ribcage.  “How about there?”

            “I don’t think you’ve hit a pleasant fountain yet,” Hannibal said.

            Ben made a thoughtful “Hmm,” noise, and then kissed his navel, the top of the dark triangle of his pubis, and then, after an agony of a pause, very gently took the tip of Hannibal’s cock in his mouth. 

            Hannibal’s breath caught in his throat, and he tipped his hips upward, wanting to go deeper.  Rose bent and kissed his lips, her hair tumbling in thick curls all around his face.  Hardly able to believe that his evening had started out with punishment and pain, Hannibal allowed himself to get lost in bliss.  

            After a short while, Ben took a break from pleasuring Hannibal to gently kiss the inside of his thigh.  “So cruel, to tease me that way,” Hannibal gasped.  Then when Ben made a soft, noncommittal noise, Hannibal asked quietly, “Fuck me?”

            “Do, Ben,” Rose said, her eyes sparkling.  “He needs it.”

            Eventually, Ben stopped the kisses and patted Hannibal’s side.  “Turn over,” he said.

            Hannibal complied, although his cock felt so swollen with desire it was almost painful.  Ben picked up the bottle of olive oil from the table beside the bed, and Hannibal drew himself up on his elbows and knees.  Very gently, Ben began working the lubricating liquid inside him.  Rose ran her hands in great, soothing sweeps up and down Hannibal’s back, and he relaxed, enjoying their attentions.  It wasn’t quite as good as oral sex, but the caressing gave him a nice warm pleasurable feeling. 

            Then Ben moved his fingers just so, and a deep, ecstatic spark made Hannibal’s knees weak.  “Oh . . . do that again,” he said.

            “You mean this?” Ben asked, amused.  He began to slowly finger-fuck Hannibal, and the delicious sensations intensified and redoubled. 

            “Mm-hm,” Hannibal said, as he moved his hips to get the stroking fingers in exactly the right spot.

            Rose lay down beside him, and cupped his face in her hand, gazing up into his eyes.  “Ohh,” she breathed, stroking his cheek with her thumb, “you are so beautiful when you’re like this.”

            Hannibal had no idea what he looked like—all he knew was that he was in a muzzy place of intense pleasure.  He reached out one hand and caught her free wrist, then began kissing each of her fingertips, circling each one lightly with his tongue.  He let his eyes fall closed.  Ben had brought him perilously close to the edge, and his breath was hard and deep.  “You’re going to finish me off in a minute,” Hannibal warned, his voice slightly strained. 

            “Do you want to come like this, or do you want me inside you?” Ben asked.

            “I want you in me,” Hannibal said.  “As deep and hard as you can.”

            Ben withdrew his fingers, and shifted position so that he was kneeling behind Hannibal.  “Relax, now,” he told him, gently rubbing his hip.

            Hannibal smiled at the suggestion that he could possibly be tense.  “You’re not going to hurt me, Ben,” he assured him.  It was true that Ben was quite a big man, but he’d penetrated Hannibal many times before and there had always been minimal discomfort. 

            “It’s just you’ve got quite a bit of bruising back here,” Ben said, caressing a sore spot on Hannibal’s bottom with his thumb.

            “Only on the outside,” Hannibal pointed out. 

             “If you’re sure it’s not going to hurt,” Ben said. 

             “You do worry about hurting me,” Hannibal said with a smile.  “It’s quite all right.  I’m not nearly as fragile as all that.”

             “If you say so,” Ben said.  A moment later he felt Ben pressing himself up against his opening, and then Ben thrust in, making a sound of pleasure deep in his throat.  At first he was very gentle, which was sweet, but not what Hannibal had in mind. 

             “Give me a good pounding,” the fiddler said.

            The next thing he knew, Ben was doing just that, his hipbones hammering against Hannibal’s backside, the bed rocking up against the wall, making his teeth rattle.  It made the welts on his behind hurt, but he didn’t care.  Hannibal grinned like an elf on the Wild Hunt, and Rose laughed with delight.  She reached up between his legs and wrapped her hand around his erection, stroking him in time with the rhythm. 

             “Oh, beautiful, beautiful Rose,” Hannibal murmured.  Then he began to sing again, in time with the headboard hitting the wall: “ _Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,/ With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:/ There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,/ Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight . ._.”

            When ecstasy took him, he cried out and all but fell on Rose, who just managed to keep stroking him until he was done.  Ben thrust eagerly into him until his own climax moments later.  Then they were tangled in one another’s arms, both men gasping, Rose caressing them both with her hands, warm and reassuring. 

            As he started to recover, Hannibal reached for Rose, running his hand down the side of her ribcage, then into the dip of her waist and up over the curve of her hip.  Catlike, she stretched out under his touch.  “Ben, we have to take care of our Rose,” he said.  “She’s been so patient.”

             “I understand you two have been looking for pleasant fountains,” she said. 

             “Mm-hm,” Ben agreed softly, and kissed her lips.  He gently laid her down on her back.

             “Let’s see who gets there first,” Hannibal said, moving down toward the foot of the bed and lifting one of Rose’s legs.  He brushed his lips against the inside of her knee.  He slowly kissed his way up as Ben kissed his way down.  Hannibal reached the sweet, wet place between her legs first, and kissed her all the way around her folds, while she moved beneath him, trying to maneuver him up against the sweetest spot of all.  She smelled of the musk of sex. 

            He paused to recite: “ _The Rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem / For that sweet odour which doth--_ ” She interrupted him with a light swat on the head.

             “This is not the time to recite poetry, Hannibal,” she said.

             “Forgive me, my Athène,” he said, “As usual, I don’t know when to stop . . .”  He went back to kissing her, this time taking pity on her obvious state of desire and going to work on her clit with his tongue.  She breathed in deeply, rolling her hips beneath him in order to direct him to the most sensitive parts of her.  Forbidden to recite poetry, and, presumably, sing, he fell to humming a sweet Irish air he remembered from his boyhood.  As Rose tipped her hips up and moaned softly, Ben reached down and began stroking Hannibal’s hair in wordless affection. 

            Soon Rose’s breath caught in her throat, and she cried out.  A moment later she was too sensitive to want Hannibal to continue, and she pulled away.  He kissed her navel, and then the dip between her breasts, as Ben made room for him at the top of the bed.  The bed ropes creaked beneath him as he settled between the Januarys.  “I love you both so much,” he said, and kissed Ben’s lips, Rose’s forehead. 

            “We love you too, Hannibal,” Ben said, pulling the other man into his warm embrace.  Rose put her arm over both of them and hugged them close.  Hannibal made a soft, contented noise as he lay between them, feeling again loved and safe. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hannibal's quotes:
> 
> With silver bells and cockle shells, and pretty maids all in a row. –Mary, Mary Quite Contrary, nursery rhyme
> 
> Poiché: è Dando, che si riceve. – “For it is in giving that we receive.” Prayer of St. Francis
> 
> Nec vitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus. –“We can endure neither our vices nor the remedies for them.” Livy
> 
> I know a bank where the wild thyme blows/ Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows –Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. There is indeed a popular song of the 1830’s that puts these lines to music. There’s a recording here: http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/9693/
> 
> And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes/ And make her full of hateful fantasies. – A Midsummer Night’s Dream
> 
> Doubt thou the stars are fire/ Doubt the sun doth move/ Doubt truth to be a liar/ But never doubt I love. –Shakespeare, Hamlet
> 
> Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry / Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie. –Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis
> 
> Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,/ With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:/ There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,/ Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight—A Midsummer Night’s Dream
> 
> The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem/ For that sweet odour which doth in it live. – Shakespeare, Sonnet 54


End file.
